Julian
Assange is “winning” in his conflict with the United States
intelligence agencies, the WikiLeaks founder told a Latin American
conference for the progressive left on Wednesday.
Speaking at
the Latin American progressive left (ELAP) in Quito, Ecuador, Assange
said that although the U.S. and United Kingdom have thrown millions
of dollars at the surveillance of the Ecuadorean embassy in London
where he has been staying since 2012, he was still able to spread
information.
“Despite
(the police and surveillance), from this embassy, protected by
Ecuador, I and WikiLeaks manage to go head to head with the most
sophisticated government on earth, of the U.S. agencies,” he said.
“We are
winning. Because secrets breed incompetency.”
Assange
addressed the conference via satellite link, on a round-table
discussion with the theme “Globalization and cyberspace, between
the security of the state and the rights of citizens.”
He continued
by explaining that while the propaganda sector of the
“superstructure” of the U.S. government was highly successful,
the intelligence agencies were failing.
“The
propaganda sector within the West is so competent, the mainstream
media is very efficient in achieving propaganda victories and
controlling the framework of debate … and engaging in character
assassination and so on,” he said, explaining that it was
“extremely efficient” in terms of money spent, “because their
basic product is itself information and is completely public.”
“It is
almost a perfect market,” he added.
The
intelligence system on the other hand “has a much higher budget but
has no information available to it.”
Assange sent
reverberations through the international and online community with
whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, which fed hundreds of thousands of
leaked files by former U.S. military employee, Chelsea Manning and
revealed some of the U.S.’s worst atrocities in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Collateral
Murder, a classified U.S. military video depicting 18 civilians
killed in airstrikes from a U.S. Apache helicopter in 2007 in New
Baghdad, Iraq, was released by the site in 2010, beginning an
avalanche of criticism against the war.
Also
speaking at conference on the same theme of globalization and
cyberspace was Alessandro di Battista, representative in the Italian
parliament for the radical left 5 Stelle movement.
Battista
explained that he, a politician with no experience, was able to win
25 percent of the vote, with nine million Italians voting for him,
spending only US$180 on his campaign. Instead of spending money, he
used social media to spread his message.
“(The
internet means that) we can all provide information, and above all it
has liberated politics from the chains of money,” he said.
“The
Ecuadorean constitution has taught us that freedom of information is
a human right, like eating, housing, clothes, air, and water,” he
added.
Assange and
di Battista were joined at the three-day conference by dozens of
other known progressive political actors in the region, such as
Colombia’s Piedad Cordoba and the recently released Cuban Five.
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